I "pinned" this quilt last year for my nephew. I even worked out the pattern on my EQ7 for yardage requirements and even bought the fabric. However, I worried that he might "outgrow" it (he already is in a huge Cat-in-the Hat kick), so I have gone in a different direction for him.

When Mr. Boss sprung the trip as a surprise for our family...I KNEW I had to do it! I already had the pattern and fabric, right?

I set up my embroidery machine and swapped out the various 4x4 inch (finished) blocks and appliqued Mickey Mouse head outlines at various angles. I decided to do just Mickey Mouse heads because of all the boys...but now that I look at it, I noticed that there are six heads. Maybe one of them needs to have a Minnie bow? Easy to add....do I dare?

I am so happy with the free motion Mickey Mouse heads I appliqued in the "blank" 4x4 sqaures. I looped and meanderead in between. I also added some Mickey Mouse outlines in the large border too.

I had intended to do the small border like the original quilt, but I was in a major time crunch and just added 5 inch borders of the white and black dotted red fabric. I actually liked how it turned out. The small dotted black fabric really balanced nicely for me!

The backing ended up being a new adventure for me. I am not very good at "improv", but for some reason, my math was really off and I ended up adding the large red dotted piece on the right side and the two strips at the top and bottom. I did like the end result!! So maybe I will actually improv my backs a little more often!

Instead of one 4x4 inch quilt label? I did FOUR! It was fun to make sure every bit of this vacation was etched into this quilt! It ended up having more uses for our Magical visit than I ever intended!

By the way, I did NOT wash it before we left because I didn't have the binding on it. I was REALLY worried about it washing with all that red, so I made sure I had 3 Color Catchers in the wash. Two of them were VERY red and the third was more pink. No red or black leaked anywhere! It also didn't crinkle that much because I think with the humidity, drool, and heat of our bodies warmed it up like a dryer...teehee!

I love this so much Heidi! We're a huge Disney family...we go as often as possible. It's our preferred vacation destination. We went for our honeymoon, and anniversaries, and birthdays... Anyways, I can see this being perfect for signatures instead of an autograph book. I may do something like this and leave the back solid and bring along fabric markers every trip. Thanks for the idea!

So funny you should mention that! Mr. Boss came up with the SAME idea! We don't usually do autographs, but he thought of it while we were driving there. I didn't have a good fabric pen, so I think we will be having them sign the back of ours in the yellow and red solid areas! I couldn't have them do the front! I ALMOST had Mickey hold the quilt up for a picture, but didn't want to disgruntle the people behind us! Next time, I just might be daring enough to do it!

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Hi there!

I'm Heidi! I'm a quilter, longarmer (is that even a word?), pattern designer, and mom of four fantastic boys. Basically, I'm just trying to keep my head above water. Did I mention that I never take myself too seriously?